ED Secret from 012: Emphasizing Vocational Trades Careers

Sean Stockard, President/CEO of the Economic Development Alliance of Brazoria County, TX, joined us on this month’s episode of Economic Development Secrets. Sean is very passionate about making sure high school students know all of their options in regards to post graduation. He believes we should spend more time educating them about vocation trades. Check out the excerpt below:

I think we need to, from a job perspective and a job standpoint, I really think that’s where the future lies is pushing the vocational trades and educating not only the students, but the student’s parents, letting them know that there are other opportunities and other options for their children to go out and have good family wage paying jobs where they can afford…they’ll be able to afford to buy a home. They may even be able to start their own business with this craft. They’ll be able to take their family on vacation. They’ll be able to afford healthcare. They’ll be able to, sound corny, they’ll be able to live the American Dream rather than trying to base their hopes and dreams on technologies and industries that again, don’t necessarily have a place in today’s marketplace.

We can try to bring back all the manufacturing jobs we want, but we all know that innovation and technology is going to take the place of most of the human workers. So rather than worrying about do we have an employee to turn that widget, we need to make sure that we’ve got an employee trained on how to work on the robot that is going to turn the widget type of thing.